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Synopsis:
From New York Times bestselling horror writer Stephen Graham Jones comes a classic slasher story with a twist—perfect for fans of Riley Sager and Grady Hendrix.
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, the unfairness of being on the outside, through the slasher horror he lives but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.
Review:
There is no doubt that anyone trying to write a slasher novel will be compared to Stephen Graham Jones. Due to the amount of slasher novels he has written (I am counting five that I have personally read), it is no doubt that Jones is seen as someone who has cornered the market of the slasher novel. And it is not be done better. Stephen Graham Jones has rules for the slasher genre, the biggest one being that slasher stories are born from someone being mistreated, bullied, or murdered, and there has to be an element of revenge in every slasher story. This is how we get Tolly Driver, a kid who drinks too much at a party, gets duct taped to a patio chair and nearly killed when given a drink that was filled with peanuts, due to him being highly allergic. This is an oversimplification of the nuances of Driver’s revenge, but is the origins of his slasher story.
Steven Graham Jones writes in a way that is slow and deliberate, like a slasher stalking it’s prey, knowing that there is no chance at escape. He likes to reveal pieces of the plot then take his time getting there. For example, we know from the first few pages that the change in Tolly Driver is due to an incident with peanuts, but it takes him about fifty pages to get there. Instead he sets the scene, immerses us in teenage drama in Lamesa, Texas in 1989, shows us the dynamics between the kids at the party, and the motivation for the reason why Tolly drinks too much and acts foolish enough for people to be mad enough to tape him to a pool chair. Stephen Graham Jones writes these types of scenes throughout all of his novels, where he gives us a glimpse of what is going to happen but then takes his time getting there. In some of his writing, this gets to be too big of a distraction, but the way that I Was a Teenage Slasher works out makes it compelling and more of an immersive story.
In the end, I Was a Teenage Slasher is a pretty simple, straightforward book. Like slasher movies, the motivation is established early on, and the kills are quick and the plot moves quickly, and the final girl is established. There are a few elements that really sets Tolly Driver apart from other slashers. It is entertaining to watch him turn from a run-of-the-mill teenager who is trying to make friends and get girls to notice him into a killer who does not even understand what is happening. This might not be my favorite Stephen Graham Jones novel (I’m still partial to Only Good Indians), but it is high on the list of his novels worth reading.
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